


The Build

by ntldr



Series: The SARMA universe [6]
Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: youngling Hot Rod
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 10:31:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,930
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8976109
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ntldr/pseuds/ntldr
Summary: Sunstreaker has gained something on this odd journey back to his twin.
Set in the SARMA comic series by greenapplefreak of deviantArt.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [the SARMA universe](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/250132) by greenapplefreak. 



> Merry Christmas greenapplefreak! 
> 
> This fic was brought to you by a phone and a Bluetooth keyboard. Santa needs to deliver my laptop soon.

Sunstreaker didn’t leave the bridge until Hot Rod had been in recharge for at least a joor in his, as the youngling had dubbed it, “sleeping room,” which was supposed to have been his regular, allocated personal space until Hot Rod had decided to take advantage of an entire cargo ship being occupied by only two mechs and put the rest of the rooms to use. 

_His_ use, Sunstreaker reminded himself with a weary grimace.

Despite Hot Rod’s eager invitation, he doubted he was going to be adding to the “rock collection room” anytime soon. And he’d had to put his foot down at the idea of a “swimming room” the last time they’d visited an oceanic planet.

There was one room, however, that continuously held his attention whenever the Autobot walked into it to retrieve the smaller mech. 

After making sure that the autopilot would warn him of any anomalies they encountered on their way to the next planet, he left the bridge behind him and headed down the corridor. His footsteps echoed hollowly through the mostly-empty vessel. It was an odd sensation for him when most war ships these days were packed with as many mechs and weapons as possible, and it surprised him sometimes that he craved to go back to that life.

On his way down to the lower sections of the ship he detoured long enough to make sure that Hot Rod was actually in recharge and hadn’t snuck out to go play somewhere else. It wasn’t that the youngling vanishing to places unknown inside the ship alarmed him anymore; rather, he didn’t like turning a corner to suddenly be confronted by whatever mischief Hot Rod had gotten himself into, be it attempting to paint the walls a new color, or crawling up the support beams, or riding another one of those creatures that he kept smuggling aboard. But, Primus be praised, for once he was deeply in recharge at his assigned time, curled up in the mess of blankets that made the top of his berth, one that Sunstreaker kept insisting that he learn to tidy up before they reestablished contact with the rest of Cybertronian society, who normally didn't surround themselves with so many blankets and pillows.

As he briefly watched over the orange youngling resting on that disaster that he called a berth, the thought of eventually reintegrating him skittered and danced around Sunstreaker’s processor and moved into a longer train of worries and misgivings about Hot Rod’s future until he shook his head and derailed them. Hot Rod had talked about how his sleeping room was far more comfortable than the “nest” of tree frans that he’d have to make for himself at night on the planet that he’d been stranded on. It made sense for him to try to build the same thing even when given a decent berth. Sunstreaker couldn’t fault him too much for that.

Others could. 

...Others _would._

Sunstreaker grimaced as he left the sleeping youngling alone and headed down the ramp to the lower levels, which housed the larger cargo bays that would have been carrying more than just energon cubes had the ship still been in the hands of the Decepticons. 

Sunstreaker knew how he wanted this chapter of his story to end. He would eventually find where Sideswipe was located. He would journey there, and reunite with him. He’d leave the cargo ship to the Autobots, or better yet, sell it to the supply officer and make a nice little profit for all his troubles, and then he and Sideswipe would go back to fighting this endless war.

But what would happen to Hot Rod? 

The twins’ reputation made it hard for them to mingle with other Cybertronians. They were warriors, thugs, _murderers._ They were valued on the battlefield, but when the smoke cleared, when there were no more enemies left to fight, when there was no reason left for the twins’ skills to exist, they went back to being as frightening as one of the Decepticons to the Neutrals and weaker-sparked Autobots. It was by luck, and Sideswipe being more social than his brother and making an effort to reach out, that they’d made lasting friends in the Autobot ranks despite most of the army cringing at the mention of a ‘Sideswipe’ or ‘Sunstreaker’ in their unit.

He could already guess the reputation that Hot Rod would build for himself too when they finally reached someplace safe enough for Sunstreaker to drop him off. He was a wild youngling. Uneducated. War-born. Naive. If Sunstreaker had found him any younger, or if he’d been stranded on that planet for longer, he might have been marked as _feral._

He would be just as much of an outcast to other Cybertronians as Sideswipe and Sunstreaker had been the moment that they’d figured out they had a gift for ripping mechs apart. And unlike the twins, Hot Rod didn’t know his helm from his aft. He had no skills to offer to anyone. Pit, he wouldn’t even make much of a youngling to be adopted, not when he had Sunstreaker showing him how to be headstrong and violent and untrusting. 

His chances of fitting in somewhere were worse than Sideswipe and Sunstreaker’s.

One of the cargo decks not being used to store energon or the potpourri of other supplies they’d picked up on their journey had been meticulously cleaned by Hot Rod, with the exception of a large crate being used as a tabletop for a terminal by the door. Sunstreaker headed right for the terminal and tabbed through the first menu to the only program it was used for. The computer hummed briefly, easily loading up the small program, but the last associated file with it strained at its limited memory banks. It clicked, it whirred, and then suddenly a giant hologram filled the entire room.

The fantasy world was ridiculously proportioned, but perfect for a youngling who didn’t care about whether a game meant to be a tool of imaginary playtime made any sense. Jagged mountains rose up as high as the hologram would let them go and then fell down into barely touched plains for no discernable reason other than the ‘artist’ had gotten tired of building them. The same went for magnificent buildings that sometimes flowed with the landscape or sometimes cut right through them. Towers that were far too skinny to not fall over in reality adorned four sides of a huge building with a lopsided roof, which Sunstreaker guessed was supposed be a castle before Hot Rod realised how long its construction would take and gave up. A smaller ‘town’ was lit up with hundreds of colorful lights, even though no real city would waste so much energy during the daytime. Part of round hill that appeared to have once been a volcano had accidentally been deconstructed, but Hot Rod had explained the damage by building a looming, frozen monster nearby, which forever snarled down at the hole that it must have made and lifted a claw to dig further into it.

For a long moment Sunstreaker stood there with his hands on his hips, honestly impressed at how much the youngling had created. Then again, Hot Rod had plenty of spare time; the orns during spaceflight were dull, and if Sunstreaker hadn’t picked up this _Mighty Mechanics_ game, a bored Hot Rod might be trying to gnaw through the hull right about now. It did keep him quiet and out of trouble, for a time.

The building mechanics were easy enough to pick up on. But Sunstreaker wasn’t interested in adding to the ‘village’ that was the most recent addition to spring up on the hologram’s plains.

Flipping a stylus out of his subspace pocket, he pressed its end to the corner of his mouth as he pictured what he wanted to do, and where and how he would do it, then clicked a button on its end to bring up another hologram of a color and texture pallet on his right-hand side and got to work.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*

Hot Rod refreshed his optics several times, then scrubbed his palms over optical glass to try to clean them manually, but the enormous object stayed hovering in the air in front of him, almost four times as big as he was.

“Wow!!”

Sunstreaker crossed his arms and tapped the stylus on his forearm plating as he studied it with far more scrutiny than the youngling. “ _Mighty Mechanics_ isn’t powerful enough to get all the details right. But this’ll do.”

“But what is it?! A moon?!”

“A moon? No. That--” Sunstreaker pointed the stylus at Luna-1, which slowly orbited the gray sphere, “--that’s a moon. This is Cybertron.”

Hot Rod’s wide blue optics took in the planet floating above his fantasy world, far different than the maps and pictures that had already been in the ship’s archive. On the hologram he could now see and appreciate the enormity of the cities, the height of the towers that rose past the thin stratosphere and beyond, the ragged cuts of canyon walls that were deep enough to expose the core, and how vastly different it was to any other planet that the cargo ship had visited.

“How long did it take you to make this?!”

“Don’t worry about it.” Sunstreaker dropped the stylus back into his subspace pocket, then gestured for the youngling. “This hologram isn’t entirely accurate, but let me explain a few things about our home.”

Hot Rod eagerly scrambled up to his side. He bounced lightly on his feet, awed, and Sunstreaker quickly took advantage of one of the few times he had the youngling’s full attention to teach him something about where they’d come from. He knew that everything that he told him would be important when they returned to their planet someday.

...When. Not _If. WHEN._

It occurred to him, as he spoke and Hot Rod drank in his every word before bursting into questions, that he’d re-discovered something while he’d been journeying with a youngling in his care.

He knew how he wanted this chapter to end. He wanted to find Sideswipe. He wanted to finish this war alongside him.

He knew that it was unlikely to happen.

He’d probably be killed by Decepticons before the twins were reunited. Or the ship would malfunction, and he’d be stranded, floating helplessly in space as the war waged on all around him. Or something would happen to Hot Rod, and he’d have to go after him, and delay in finding his brother long enough for Sideswipe to end up on the wrong side of a blaster before he was there to push him out of the way. Or he _would_ find him, and they’d both die by an ambush, or orbital strike, or poor orders from their commander, their twins sparks extinguished without ever seeing Cybertron freed.

He’d nearly given up searching before.

But he kept trying anyway because he’d regained something while looking after Hot Rod. Something that made him build a small model of a planet for a youngling who was even less likely to survive the war and see it with his own optics.

Something that assured him that, somehow, this youngling would find his place in the universe.

...But he could improve Hot Rod's chances by laying the right framework, of course.

“--closest to Iacon is Praxus. And it has smaller cities that it overlords on this side here--”

And if he could hope for Hot Rod future, then he could hope for himself and his brother too.


End file.
